


with grace in your heart and flowers in your hair

by knightinbrightfeathers



Category: Carry On - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Friendship, New Year's Eve, New Year's Resolutions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-31
Updated: 2015-12-31
Packaged: 2018-05-10 17:39:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5595043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knightinbrightfeathers/pseuds/knightinbrightfeathers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>New Year's Eve, twenty one years apart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	with grace in your heart and flowers in your hair

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "After the Storm" by Mumford and Sons.

Lucy’s always liked summer. She loves running in the tall grass behind the chapel, loves the teasing from her mother about the scattering of freckles she sprouts every year, loves the way the light lasts and lasts as if it, too, wants summer to never end.

She misses summer with an ache that only lessens when the sun peeks out between the clouds and warms her skin to the point of overheating. It won't come for months now, although the coming of the new year heralds the coming of the new year's summer as well. January is horrible,but at least it's new.

“I hate winter,” she tells Tali.

“Don't be so dramatic,” Mitali says. She says it sharply, but that's just how Tali is, all caustic acid and whiplash reactions - to the point of cruel sometimes. She doesn't mean it, though. Not the way she means other things.

Not the way she means her magic on Lucy’s hair, firm but never pulling. With every murmured word a flower weaves itself into the curls that brush the shoulders of Lucy’s blouse. Heather and freesia; flowers used to have meaning beyond the strict Victorian language, although that's all faded away like old blooms now. Nowadays, rosemary does mean remembrance. Lucy can never remember them all, but the stuffy old Vics thought that freesia meant trust and heather meant admiration, and that's good enough for Lucy.

It smells not like a garden, wet earth and living breathing growing things, striving and reaching, but like flowers smell when you get down to the very core of them. Essence, Lucy thinks, half drunk on the scent of roses and lavender.

“There, that's done,” Mitali says.

“Thank you,” Lucy says, bouncing up from her seat on the bed to look at herself in the mirror. The movement makes the mattress shift, jostling Mitali so that it's either stand or fall on her back. She chooses to stand, smoothing out the wrinkles of her dress with a flick of her hand.

“Really, Lucy, you could have done this on your own,” Mitali says, because she's never seen the point of being - a girl, maybe, but Lucy thinks that what Tali really doesn't understand is anything that works on a small scale. A bit like Davy.

Not that she'd ever tell Tali that. Instead, Lucy kisses her friend on the cheek and loops her arm through Mitali’s. “Come on, let's go to the party.”

“You're worked up over Davy, aren't you,” Mitali says, wrinkling her nose. Her tone says you know he's seen you in grass stained exercise shorts and bloody knees, but the spell that irons out the wrinkles in Lucy’s skirt is gentle.

“You’ll see, Tali,” Lucy says. “This year is going to be different.”

“He’s already gone on you,” Mitali sniffs, but supportively.

~*~

There's something very sad and lonely about New Year's, almost dingy. In terms of magic and auspicious dates it's nothing much, a tiny modern blip in the radar against the long tradition of the solstice. It's good for fireworks displays and not much else, unless you want to try mixing magic and alcohol and see how nice the nurses on the New Year’s Eve shift feel like being to you. No one really likes New Year's. They either hate it or want to like it so much it hurts their stomach.

To Agatha, New Year's doesn't bear thinking about. She used to have some kind of fun, but this year all she can think of is this time last year, and this time last year…

She doesn't want to go to any parties. She could - she's gotten plenty of invitations, and if she dressed up she could get into most places. Just the idea of alcohol and people pressed together is enough to make her think of her parents’ parties, and those were nothing like the music and reddish heat already spilling from the doorways of clubs. Imagine how much worse the house parties, like the one Emily invited her to.

Maybe if she goes, she'll stop thinking about it so much.

Agatha’s phone rings. It’s a mark of how distracted she is that she actually answers it before she remembers that the only people who still call are either annoying or her parents. She answers without checking the number.

“Happy New Year,” Penny says.

Agatha frowns and checks the number. Penny’s in her contact list as Nosy Parker, because she was in a snit and she never feels guilty enough to change it back. The number on her screen is anonymous.

Agatha puts her phone back next to her ear. “It’s three hours till midnight,” she says.

“Well, I do have my own life, you know,” Penny says. It’s definitely her, because there’s nobody who’s that precise mix of grumpy old man and slogan-toting porcupine. Agatha can almost see the precise purple of her glasses.

“Uh huh,” Agatha says. She’s blanking on what to say, which almost never happens. “This call must be costing you a fortune.”

“I spelled an old Nokia to complete long distance calls free of charge,” Penny says smugly.

“That’s why it sounds like you’re speaking through concrete.”

“Ha ha.” There’s a short silence, so rare in a talk with Penny. “For real, Agatha, how are you?”

“Afraid I’m fading away without a wand?” Agatha asks. “Pining for the fields?”

“Of Watford? Please. I always knew you’d hotfoot it to somewhere glamorous the moment you got your diploma.” That’s a lie, and Penny knows it. “I just thought you’d wait until you actually got the diploma-”

Agatha covers her eyes with her free hand. “Can we not have this conversation now? Again?”

“Fine. How’s what’s his face?” Penny asks.

“Either in Nevada or with his new girlfriend, depending on which one you’re talking about.”

Penny snorts on the other side of the line, a blast of interference in Agatha’s ear. “What, no flannel wearing lit student hanging on your arm?”

“Sometimes you should think before you speak,” Agatha snaps, and instantly regrets it, because now Penny…

And yes, there she goes. “What’s wrong?” Penny demands. “Did somebody hurt you? Tell me who it is and I’ll kill them.”

“Plane tickets are expensive,” Agatha says, because she can.

“I’m magic, I can do whatever I want,” Penny says, which is just like her. Agatha wants to cry a little bit, except that crying publically on New Year’s is humiliating.

“Can I…” Agatha hesitates. “Do you think…”

“Out with it, old girl,” Penny says, all heave-ho and what-have-we-here, which makes Agatha feel a bit better. Penny being Penny is the perfect cure for being ashamed of yourself. Penny doesn’t know the meaning of the word ashamed, and the word ashamed is so offended by this that it goes off to have a good sulk.

Better out than in, cliche as that may be. “Do you think there’s something wrong with me?” Agatha asks in a rush.

“No,” Penny says automatically. She’s probably been getting sensitivity training.

“I think I’m broken,” Agatha says. “On the inside. I don’t- I can’t love people.”

“Nonsense, of course you love people. You love me and Simon, don’t you? And your parents, although that doesn’t really count, most people-”

“Not like that,” Agatha says. “You know what I mean.”

“Maybe you’re gay.”

“I am not gay,” Agatha says. A girl with pink hair and a motorcycle jacket gives her a judgemental look. “I don’t love people, Penny. All those boys, I dumped them. Do you think I never tried kissing girls? We went to a boarding school, for goodness sake, sexual experimentation is practically a trope. I don’t feel like that about anybody! Not Simon back then, and not Baz, and none of the boys here. I just kiss them, and hold hands, and play pretend, and then they start talking about their feelings and I don’t understand any of it, I don’t, I just nod and smile and say something that makes them think they’re going to mend my broken fucking heart or something. And then I dump them.” Agatha’s panting, and she’s getting funny looks. She can feel a flush warming her cheeks.

“Oh,” Penny says. “That explains it.”

“Does it?” Agatha asks wearily.

“Of course it does. You’re not broken at all. So you don’t love a few people like they think you should. So what? Whoever said romance was all that great? A few bad movies and the patriarchy? Ooh, fall in love, marry a boy, have his spawn. That’s just garbage you've been fed for too long to be able to recognize it as garbage. Do you love your friends?”

Agatha thinks about it. “Yes.”

“Do you love your classes?”

“I like them,” Agatha says.

“Do you love music and dancing and those impractical little windows in your flat?”

“You’re making all of this up as you go along, aren’t you?” Agatha asks around the lump in her throat.

“Well, yes.”

Agatha laughs. “Thanks for bullshitting me into feeling better, Pen.”

“That’s what friends are for,” Penny says, in a horrible cheery voice so terrible that it must be an imitation of something. Penny isn’t capable of that amount of fakery. “Now, it’s five in the morning, so if you don’t mind, I think I’ll go back to sleep.”

“Happy New Year,” Agatha says.

“May all your resolutions, et cetera,” Penny agrees, and hangs up.

Agatha tucks her phone back into her pocket, ducking her head against the cold and to hide the little smile on her lips. She wouldn’t go back, not ever, but sometimes it’s nice to remember what she isn’t going back to. Penny’s brusque, acerbic, caring nature. Casting a spell like a grand jete, poised and ready to leap. She doesn’t miss magic or Watford or the overwhelming need to fit into her role so well that she becomes it. It’s good to remind herself that she doesn’t want to go back, because that leaves either stuck or moving forward.

Move forward, Wellbelove, Agatha tells herself. The conversation with Penny was not a magic solution- ha- and she’s going to be frustrated and mad at Penny and lost all over again tomorrow, but tomorrow is a brand new year. She isn’t going to be fixed tomorrow, or smarter, and her heart isn’t going to grow three sizes. But it is a new year, and no two years are the same.

“This year is going to be different,” Agatha says determinedly.

It is. It can’t help but be.


End file.
